University of Minnesota Athletics
Gopher Women's Hockey Within the Community
12/17/2008 12:00:00 AM | Women's Hockey
Senior defenseman Dagney Willey and the rest of the Golden Gopher women's hockey team have been busy throughout the course of the year with community service projects. With the first semester wrapping up, Willey is a guest writer for gophersports.com to review all of the community service projects throughout the 2008-09 season. Willey has also supplied the photos. The second half of the Gopher season opens Jan. 3-4 when Minnesota travels to Niagara University.
Hello Everyone!
It's been a busy fall for us on the ice and in the classroom, but as a team we have been making the time to reach out into our communities.
To start off the year we all participated in the HopeDay Festival that is put on by the student-athletes for the organization HopeKids. We went in shifts playing with kids at the hockey station and small games station. I think that everyone had a great time and it was great to see all of the kids and members of HopeKids.
On our bye week (Nov. 3-7), we volunteered as a team with Rake Rattle and Roll. We split up into teams and went out to houses with elderly or disabled owners and raked the leaves in their yards. It was tough work, but it was really appreciated by the home owners and was well worth it.
This fall, we received a classroom of second graders as pen-pals. They are from Oak Hill Elementary in St. Cloud, Minn., and they sent us letters, some with their school pictures and/or drawings that they have made. We sent them back letters with our "school pictures" or mug shots. We are looking forward to receiving letters back and inviting them to our game when we travel again to St. Cloud (Feb. 20).
This holiday season, we decided to adopt a family through the Aliveness Project. We collected money and items from us as a team, our parents, and the power-play club. We raised $800 to buy presents as well as gaining many donated items. We are extremely excited about giving that family of five a great Christmas!
We are looking forward to continue our community service into the spring. We are hoping to visit the children's hospital and again participate in Relay for Life as well as continue writing our pen-pals!
Hope everyone has a great holiday season!
Dagney
